


Mistshift Inktober Drabbles

by Scribe



Category: Mistworld Fictional TV Series Campaign
Genre: Drabbles, Multi, apparently I'm writing this now, i will die on this hill, which are 100 words exactly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:33:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22726207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/pseuds/Scribe
Summary: A drabble per day for the October 2019 inktober prompts. (Finished in...February. Listen, nobody's perfect.)
Relationships: Alokas | Kithri/Rai, Athol/Brandark (Planeshift)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	1. October 1: Ring

Selen has heard the bell countless times.

This is the first time she’s felt it, though, its deep tolling pulsing in her bones like an ocean beating again shore. Its myriad overtones shiver reality into a new shape. Before her eyes everything is real and unreal, unmade and remade, and deep inside her the wash of sound clears a place for something she’s never felt before: freedom.

The bell peals again. Somewhere amidst the layers and layers of sound, as complex and incomprehensible as the world itself, she thinks she hears a whisper. _Goodbye, old friend,_ it says. _Travel well_.


	2. October 2: Mindless

Asmun sits in her fortress in the sky which isn’t a sky and whiles away hours that may not be hours fine-tuning her machines. Some of it is necessary, of course, to keep up defenses, improve diagnostics, iterate experiment after experiment. Some of it is just mindless make-work. She lingers in her workshop because time has no measure here, and because when she gets absorbed enough in gears and springs and engines she can forget, for a moment, that Ilmryn isn’t playing in the next room, that Dyr isn’t going to come tap her shoulder and summon her to dinner.


	3. October 3: Bait

There’s no way Rai hasn’t noticed Alokas’s propensity to use himself as bait in their cons. She doesn’t ask about it, but then she seems to trust that he’ll tell her whatever she needs to know, and rarely bothers with the rest of it.

She doesn’t need to know why it’s so easy to list this body that doesn’t fit as one of their assets. The truth is that it feels good, sometimes, to treat it as a thing, just another object he can manipulate for his own gain. It’s simple that way.

Besides, it works, and that’s what counts.


	4. October 4: Freeze

The bagon never thought much about bodies before its new friend gave it some- they’re just funny little husks that mortals seem to shed constantly. It’s proud, though, to be regarded as such an expert; only the most advanced treasurekeepers know how to create the tiny bubbles of frozen time that preserve such delicate organic material. One of the mortals even comes and puts its shed husk back on, which the bagon didn’t know could happen. Later, it gives the bagon a handsomely jeweled ceremonial dagger in thanks for keeping the husk fresh.

Clearly, these friends are a good investment.


	5. October 5: Build

The planning session for the new world is one of the strangest things Shiko has ever experienced. It goes on for an immeasurable eon and the setting is always shifting. She sees jungles, caves, grand council rooms, comfortable kitchens, cities and villages and undergrounds both familiar and not. When she reaches for pen and paper it’s at her elbow, but she finds that she remembers everything perfectly without taking notes. Athol is watching her when she looks up; there’s blank paper in front of him, too. It’s a new reality, she reminds herself. Time to start learning how it works.


	6. October 6: Husky

Bashal, goddess of animals and shapeshifters, can appear any way she pleases, but she favors her original form; no one hunts white wolves in the new world.

When it is necessary to move among people, she makes herself a little smaller, a little less alarming, and trots wherever she pleases as a pure white husky. Then she curls up with plumed tail over paws and passes unnoticed, but for one or two curious children who come to rub her ears and feed her scraps they’ve stolen. It’s familiar, sleeping like that. She does it more than she strictly needs to.


	7. October 7: Enchanted

When Leila was little, she drew pictures in the fire the way other children did in the dirt. They weren’t very good, but they were enough to get her lessons from the woman at the end of the closed-off lane whose small precious library the other children weren’t allowed to touch. The elders thought the community could use someone with a talent for disguise, for controlling what enemies and authorities saw and didn’t see, for pretty lies and convincing shows.

In the end they were right, though not in the way they’d predicted. In the end she saved them all.


	8. October 8: Frail

It’s been an age since Atrin embodied her full godhood. She enjoys shaping the world to her will with no one opposing her, but she also knows that the echoing emptiness of the other gods’ absence is wrong, that the world itself is wrong in ways she doesn’t understand. It’s eating away at her.  
  
 _Follow me_ , says a hint of a whisper in her mind. She recognizes her old adversary. There’s no reason to trust Vecna, but no other path to follow, and Atrin never gave up easily.  
  
She reaches the lighthouse at the last moment before her strength fails.


	9. October 9: Swing

Nyka swings his sword, raises his shield. Right, left, aim for what looks sort of like a neck. The extraplanar monsters of the day are tough but stupid, and there’s a rhythm to dispatching them.

People can get accustomed to anything, he thinks. He knows the city won’t hold much longer and yet he’s mostly thinking about what will be cooking in the barracks tonight, wondering if the coming shift rotation will put him back with one or the other of the people who occasionally share his bed.

Raise shield, swing sword. Dispatch. Find next target. Swing sword. Right, left.


	10. October 10: Pattern

The philosophers and scientists of this new world don’t know how lucky they are, Ormand thinks. The gods with the most sway over the building blocks of their existence are Asmun and Athol, both of whom believe- in their own way- in something very like the scientific method. At the core of this new existence there are patterns, and logic, and every question ultimately has an answer, though most of them haven’t been asked yet.

Ormand might’ve been jealous of those who live in such a world, if he hadn’t instead been at Asmun’s right hand while it was created.


	11. October 11: Snow

In the cities they sometimes portray Ehlonna as peaceful, pastoral, flowers in her hair and fruit in her hands. The farmers know better. Their crops belong to her, true, but so does the withering frost, the too-early snow, the flood and the forest fire and the weeds and the insidious mold. She is alien and unpredictable, like her domain.

The cities learn too, in time. Stone walls withstand many things but not tidal waves, not gouts of ash and lava that burn the sky. Walls can’t even keep out something as simple, as perfectly natural, as the bitter, killing cold.


	12. October 12: Dragon

The Force didn’t have to follow Asmun into the mist. It probably shouldn’t have; the balance of the whole world depended on its continued existence. It had a duty to protect itself. Haring off to mysterious unfindable planes that technically shouldn’t exist was not exactly in the spirit of that duty. Rescuing just one human, even an influential one, was definitely not worth the risk.

The Force was also a very young dragon, and it hadn’t exactly signed up for such a duty, and it loved Asmun. It would just be a small adventure, it thought. They’d be back soon.


	13. October 13: Ash

Ash was not what her parents called her.

As a young initiate she’d been told to meditate on the nature of death, its place in the world and in her heart. She’d been fasting for two days, deep in a kind of mesmerized contemplation, when the vision came: the fire of life smoldering down to embers and guttering out, leaving in its wake its opposite, cold and gray and motionless. The inevitable, inescapable product of all fires, no matter how bright. A plain and quiet and universal end.

In time, she very nearly forgot that she’d ever had another name.


	14. October 14: Overgrown

The graveyard was made to be a place of possibility. There was a tower that formed there, in an unvisited part of the vastness, shrouded by mist and visible only in glimpses. The timeline contained within showed a new world that could come to pass if certain people decided to go back seven hundred years and try it all again.

Eventually moss overtook the tower, clinging to its every crack and fissure and spreading until it was completely overgrown, an otherworldly hillock. Not destroyed, but the world moved on to other possibilities, and the tower’s door was buried and forgotten.


	15. October 15: Legend

Legends about YOKBOT in the new world:

\- If you put on a good enough performance, one of the gods will come and bless it.  
\- If you put on too good a performance, the gods will be jealous and punish you.  
\- Mortals who are allowed to see YOKBOT productions come back...changed.  
\- Sometimes the gods come to open mic nights in disguise.  
\- Divine inspiration from YOKBOT can either make a playwright or drive them mad.  
\- You can technically become a god by beating Alokas in a rap battle, but nobody’s actually done it.  
\- If YOKBOT stops performing the world will end.


	16. October 16: Wild

Cierce knows something is wrong. The plan was never wholesale destruction, never indiscriminate slaughter. She issues orders and knows they aren’t really hers, knows some magic or poison has taken over her will- but whatever is controlling her makes it so she doesn’t care.

She tells them this, afterward. She doesn’t tell them about the fierce, vengeful joy she felt when the wall was breached in Wishara, when the outer planes crashed in cruel and wild and began to wreck all the tidy, safe pretension of that place.

(She suspects that she was an easy mark for Saren Raithe’s spell.)


	17. October 17: Ornament

The Bagon isn’t one of the more prominent deities, but it is one of the most useful. Every town worth its salt has a Trading Tree: an apple tree, by tradition, the tallest and most beautiful that can be found. People tie baubles and jewels, relics and offerings onto the branches, until the tree bears a strange crop that’s more ornament than fruit. They bring gifts and they recite or sing their praises to the Bagon, and if they’re lucky, if it likes their offering enough, whatever they ask for in return will fall from the canopy into their hands.


	18. October 18: Misfit

Kithri starts eating dinner with her team more and more often.

They’re not exactly good company. Conversation comes in fits and starts at first; people in the assassination business don’t tend to chat about themselves or their backgrounds. They talk about work, mostly, or the quality of the food, events in the city.

They’re not friends yet, though they’re getting closer. Still, even the stuttering conversation isn’t weighted with expectations; the long silences are just quiet, not tense or bitter.

She fits with these people, is the thing. At the end of a long day, it’s preferable to going home.


	19. October 19: Sling

When Merineth joins the wall guard, her father tells a story. Do you remember, he says, when you turned eight you begged and begged for a slingshot. You spent hours sitting next to Bas in the yard, “protecting” him while he played. You would set up stones and blocks of wood all around to be the encroaching enemy and you’d shoot them all in turn before they could get him.

It helped that they didn’t move, says her dad, and everyone laughs.

Her father takes her aside afterward, fear in his eyes. The real enemies move, he says. Be careful.


	20. October 20: Tread

Features of the souped-up ATV (may it rest in peace):

-All-terrain tread (including abystral)  
-Front- and rear-facing canons, as well as central swivel-mounted canon  
-Parking assist  
-Gravity enhancer  
-Compartment of endless snacks  
-Stabilizer  
-GPS  
-Ability to switch between magical and mechanical fuel as needed  
-Headlights  
-Headdarks  
-Silent stealth mode  
-Built-in sound system that plays either only within the vehicle or broadcasts outward  
-Vertical spider climb mode  
-Force shield  
-Cupholders  
-Hidden compartment under the floor for contraband  
-Child safety locks  
-Back seats that fold down for cargo storage or, if need be, sleeping space  
-YOKBOT decal with flame and glitter motif


	21. October 21: Treasure

Other children are always asking Itzal: where’s your hoard? Surely all dragons have hoards.

Other things can be treasures, says Itzal’s mother when she asks. Friends, family, experiences, knowledge. You don’t need a pile of gold and gems.

She nods, but she doesn’t quite believe it, and neither do her friends.

She goes to her grandmother next, who laughs and says, yes, of course there’s a family hoard, but don’t expect to just inherit- or even to see it- without proving yourself first. You need your own treasure to contribute.

Itzal starts training for the youth dungeoneering league that week.


	22. October 22: Ghost

Athol is never sure, afterward, if he regrets accidentally resetting himself. It’s hard to shake the memories of that other life he had for a few days, or a year, or maybe a whole lifetime, depending on how you count. It’s a bit like being haunted by his own ghost. Sometimes he aches for the simplicity of it: rebuilding a Dwarven kingdom, fulfilling everything he thought was his destiny, not knowing the world was crumbling around them as they worked. It’s the only time he’s ever wished _not_ to know something; that alone is almost more unsettling than anything else.


	23. October 23: Ancient

This timeline is the most unsettling that Dusk has seen yet. It’s been seven hundred years and yet here he is, here _they_ are, here the castle and the receiving room and- he slips away for a moment- here the room that Dyr and Tsadok set aside for him, with the same furniture and the wall hanging Gwinna brought that he’d entirely forgotten about until this moment.

He blinks back to the main room and introduces his new friends to his impossible old ones, trying to smile through the awful, creeping feeling that something is _wrong_ with all of it.


	24. October 24: Dizzy

This new Brandark brings them to his hidden safe haven and Rai promptly gets herself a concussion.

It’s objectively an idiotic thing to do. When she hears that there are training grounds, though, she can’t help herself. She’s itching for something as simple as a practice bout, for the blessedly narrow focus of concentrating on each move, each blow, not worrying about destabilizing a timeline or killing a planar hero or trying desperately to keep Nyka from losing his memories and his mind.

(The nausea and dizziness are almost as good a distraction, when she eventually has to stop fighting.)


	25. October 25: Tasty

There were plenty of strategic reasons for Saren Raithe to order everyone’s favorite foods. It was an overture of friendship, proof that they could work together. The reminder that he knew them and could predict them might discourage any plans they had to double cross him again. Just the pleasure of enjoying a favorite meal might put them that much more at ease, that much more off their guard, when it came to negotiations. He had plenty of reasons; what he lacked was anyone who might ask him to provide them.

(That was, perhaps, the real reason for the food.)


	26. October 26: Dark

Nyka doesn’t remember much of what would’ve been his teenage years, if he’d been human enough to have any concept of adolescence, or of time. He remembers darkness, an all-consuming darkness that encompassed his mind and body and will, until the dark was within him as much as he was within the dark.

He does remember- vividly- being ripped away from it, his human consciousness slamming back into him with all its limits and all its fractured memories. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive Saren Raithe for being the one to rescue him, for being the first face he saw. 


	27. October 27: Coat

Ever since making Bashal a part of her own soul, Leila’s started dreaming of the glow of moonlight on ice, of snow crunching beneath her feet (bare, but not cold) and catching in her hair (a coarse coat, shorter and thicker than in real life). Sometimes Bashal is running with her. She’s never sure if it’s Bashal in truth, sharing the dream, or if it’s just a figment of her own mind. She wakes to find Bashal watching her from across the room, but there are always other, more pressing things to worry about, and she never manages to ask.


	28. October 28: Ride

The first time Brandark met Athol, the city’s weakened walls had been in danger of collapse under a sudden new wave of attack. Athol had done a split-second evaluation of the soldiers surrounding him and something made him grab Brandark in particular as he whisked himself beyond the walls, the two of them melting impossibly from one shadow to another to surprise the enemy from within the center of their forces. Just one ride, one single heartbeat, and Brandark was in love.

“With the shadows, or with him?” his friends quipped, and laughed when he blushed and wouldn’t answer.


	29. October 29: Injured

Ehlonna knows when she’s injured, weakening, when the splintering of her bow ought to be the final blow. She knows that her time is rightfully over, that she’s one of the very last still clinging to this world. She’s very tired. It might be restful, to join her brethren in fading slowly away.

Bashal is out there, though, fighting for the cause Ehlonna bound her to. And there’s a swell of belief- a little confused, a little haphazard, but still reaching her- that means the mortals must be doing something to help.

Ehlonna squares her metaphorical shoulders, and holds on.


	30. October 30: Catch

Thren’s new team keep catching themselves when they address her, biting back some other name.

"It’s from the first version of you we met," Rai says, when she asks. "She went by Nightwing."

"I…did? Why?" she asks.

"You’d made a deal with a nightwing, I think." Rai looks uncomfortable, and hastens to add: "it was to save your whole order. It was a hard timeline. You did what you had to."

The prototype explodes then, so they stop talking. Thren mulls over the idea for a long time, though, wondering if she has that capacity for bravery, or for disaster. 


	31. October 31: Ripe

It’s not that Rai never imagined Alokas stripping her armor off her between kisses, but somehow in her fantasies she wasn’t grimy and bloodied and _sweaty_ from fighting in it for what felt like days without a break.

"Sorry, I’m kind of disgusting," she apologizes, aiming for nonchalance, for normalcy, and not hitting either one.

"I don’t mind," he says, but then he smiles, a smile she recognizes (she loves his I-have-a-plan look), and she can actually feel the twist of divine power as the room reshapes itself to incorporate a steaming tub.

He holds out a hand; she follows.


End file.
